


The Cold

by Skrigget



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abuse, Death, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 18:41:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1276807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skrigget/pseuds/Skrigget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s cold the first time he meets him. The cold never disappears. It came with the boy, but Killian realizes way too late for it to even matter. </p><p>Killian isn't in love with Peter, he's addicted to him. Peter is his drug. A terribly, twisting, destroying, freezing drug.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QWERTYbee](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=QWERTYbee).



> This is only my second fanfiction to this fandom (and my first Captain Pan fic) so bear with me
> 
> This is dedicated to QWERTYbee (http://killianjoenss.tumblr.com/)

It’s cold the first time he meets him. The cold never disappears. It came with the boy, but Killian realizes way too late for it to even matter. It’s December and the Christmas decorations are filling the streets, shining down on the people walking in the two millimeters of white snow that’s covering the ground. Killian is standing outside the shop with a cigarette in between his fingers, his eyes staring straight ahead at anything but the happy people all around him. Somewhere in the distance he hears the sound of a Christmas carol and he can’t help it. 

,,Oh bloody fucking hell,” he exclaims and apparently not as low as he thought, because immediately someone replies: 

,,I know. Makes you want strangle someone, doesn’t it?” 

And it really does but Killian is still surprised. He turns his head to the right and finds a boy – a smug teenager, to be correct – staring at him, one eyebrow far up in his forehead and a smirk plastered on glistering red lips. He’s beautiful. 

To be honest Killian’s not exactly sure how, but two hours later they’re in Killian’s apartment in the other end of the city, clothes falling to the floor, hands touching, ribbing, pulling. Teeth and lips and nails. It’s frantic and damn near perfect. Killian tastes blood in his mouth but he doesn’t know if it’s Peter’s or his own and he doesn’t really care at that point anyway. He knows, somewhere deep down, that he should ask how old the boy is. He should at least care, shouldn’t he? Well, he doesn’t. He’ll never meet him again anyway. Sometimes Killian’s right. It’s not very often, but it happens. This is not one of those times. That’s not the last time he sees Peter. He meets him again on Christmas Eve, standing outside of the shop where Killian works, a cigarette in between rep lips. 

,,What are you doing here?” Killian asks surprised. 

,,What are you doing here?” Peter snickers back. Killian doesn’t know how to tell him that he can’t be at home because there are pictures of Liam and his father and mother everywhere there and he can hear the neighbors through the paper-thin walls singing and laughing and eating and he can’t handle that. So neither Peter nor Killian answer but end up walking around the city. They talk but not really. They tell things, random thing, that’s not really relevant to either of them. And they listen or pretend to listen and they smoke and smoke and smoke until their nails are broken and their lips are bleeding. But that could just be from the cold. They end up in Killian’s apartment where they turn up the music and have sex in the kitchen. Killian makes hot cacao afterwards while Peter sits on the counter, naked, pale and perfect. So damn perfect it’s going to swallow Killian whole one day. He just doesn’t know yet. 

He can’t remember the third time they meet – or he’s chosen not to remember, in the end it doesn’t really matter. It becomes and endless drill of limps, fingers tangled in messy hair, teeth and tongues and lips and blood, pleasure and pain. Killian’s addicted. He realizes this about the same time he realizes how cold he is. Peter is a demon. He’s a bloody demon. He’s all smirks and mocking laughter and quick remarks and dominance and eyebrows and nails trailing down Killian’s back till they’re both bleeding and panting. One afternoon Killian comes home late from work and finds his apartment unlocked. He figures Peter unlocked it with the spare key and he’s right. He half expects to find the boy sleeping, half expect to find him naked on the kitchen counter. He doesn’t. Instead Peter’s in the shower. He’s covered in blood and bruises and cum and the sight makes Killian wants to shoot someone, anyone, preferably himself. He helps clean the boy who hisses when he touches the fragile skin covered in bruises that sure as hell doesn’t belong there. Peter tries to laugh it off but it’s the most pathetic Killian has ever seen him and Peter knows himself, so he stops. Afterwards they go to bed. None of them say anything. Words are not needed and besides; Killian feels like he’s chocking, drowning, dying – unable to speak a word, really. It’s been three months, he realizes, since the cold entered his body. He’s waiting for it to reach his heart and kill the pain that swims in his veins – now more than ever. That night Killian sleeps with an arm protectively around Peter’s body, Peter presses himself against Killian’s side. They feel save like that but neither of them are going to say something like that. Ever. 

It happens more and more often now and Killian can’t wait for the cold to reach his bloody heart and kill the pain because it fucking hurts too come home and find the boy in the shower, trying to clean the blood and cum off his back without crying out in pain every time the warm water hits the wounds. 

,,Move in with me,” Killian says. He can’t stop the words, he physically can’t. They slip off his tongue far too easily and they shouldn’t. They really shouldn’t. They are like venom on the tip of his tongue and poison in the air. Suffocating them both. 

Peter doesn’t turn to him look at him, instead he just laughs. Loud and painful. Like the devil would laugh and it makes Killian feel so ridiculously small. 

,,Why would I?” the boy asks oh so innocently. 

,,Why wouldn’t you?” 

This is how their conversations go; questions, mostly unanswered, filling the thick air between them until they can barely breathe. This is why they don’t talk. Killian still waits for the cold to reach his heart when Peter leaves the next morning. 

Peter doesn’t show for several weeks. No calls, no text, no randomly showing up outside the shop or in the apartment. He just isn’t… there. And Killian tries not to mind, but really he can’t. Because the boy might be a bloody demon – he is most definitely a demon – but Killian wants that. He craves that. Everything about the boy makes his skin burn, and without the cold the boy brings with him, how’s he ever going to survive that? It’s been a month when Killian is beginning to panic. One night he sits at the table with the Rum and the whiskey and the beers in front of him, lined up like soldiers ready to conquer and destroy his already broken (partly from the this – the burning liquid, partly from losing his family far too early, and partly – mostly – from Peter) body. When he finally admits to himself that he’s going out of his freaking mind, he hears a key being put in lock of the front door. He turns his head very slowly and sees it open like in slow motion. 

He’s alright. Killian doesn’t know why this surprises him as much as it does, but he guess he always figured – hoped, in some masochistic way – that the reason the boy didn’t show, was because he was broken and bend. Hurt and damaged, so that he physically couldn’t drag himself out of bed. Not even for Killian. But he isn’t and Killian is happy, he really is, because all those terrible images that’s been haunting his nightmares disappears the moment he sees the boy standing in the doorway in one, untouched, perfect piece, but Killian still has a bitter taste in his mouth. 

,,You really shouldn’t keep your spare under your doormat” Peter snorts. 

,,How else would you be able to enter?” 

,,I’d find a way” 

Killian doesn’t doubt that for a moment. Killian shakes his head and sighs and Peter laughs mockingly and pulls his jacket and shoes off. He enters the kitchen, eyes flickering to the line of alcohol on the table, but doesn’t comment. Maybe because he knows that it’s partly his fault.  
They (try to) make dinner and it’s terribly because neither of them can cook to save their lives. They have to throw it out and order pizza that they eat while watching a movie about a vampire and world war two or maybe it’s a zombie apocalypse? Who cares, really. Half way through Peter says: 

,,It’s cold outside” 

,,It is” 

,,And it’s almost July” 

Killian looks at him, really looks at him, sees him for the first time in forever. A seventeen year old boy with green, piercing eyes and ash-blonde hair, big, kissable lips and a straight nose. It’s been over half a year. More than six months. So many days and so many hours of kissing and biting and having sex in the shower or in the living room. So much nonsense had been said between them, conversations that weren’t really conversations. Rhetorical questions and unanswered prayers. It had been hot and messy and so damn painful and suddenly Killian can’t stand the thought of living without it.  
When he wakes up the following morning Peter is gone. 

The warmth finally settles in. The sun shines through the thick clouds covering his mind and something other than the damn cold starts to terrorize his trembling body. He tries to tell himself that it is good, that he needs it, that he needs to move on. He tries to tell himself that the warmth is good for him. But no matter how hard he tries, the only thing he is ever able to convince himself of is that the warm, no matter how hot, will never burn away the images of the boy who’d scraped, ripped and wrecked his way into corners of Killian where no one was every supposed to enter. Because Killian was already damaged long before the demon boy appeared with his oh-so-innocent-and-yet-deadly-eyes and his pale skin and his long, white fingers that could’ve snap Killian’s neck without a second thought, Killian is sure of it.  
It has been three warm months. He thinks the cold has finally disappeared but he should’ve known better. 

He is running down the streets, late for work as always. The sun is for the first time in ages nowhere to be spotted on the dark sky. When Killian passes the newsstands he freezes. He’s heart is beating so fast that he can’t hear anything. Everything drowns both outside and inside him. With surprisingly strong and steady fingers he takes the newspaper from the stand and reads the headline: 

BOY BRUTALLY BEATEN TO DEATH! POLICE SUSPECT STEPFATHER TO BE INVOLVED. 

The picture beneath it is blurred but Killian has spent too many nights kissing those lips, too many hours with those fingers yanking his hair for him to doubt for even a second who it is. Killian had once tried to wash away the blood from the body, careful not to touch the bruises or wounds and now blood and bruises and cuts is all there is. He feels sick to his stomach in a way he hasn’t before. Not even when they called to tell him Liam was dead. Not even then. Then he felt just felt damn sad. Now it is so much more. Because Peter wasn’t a boy you fall in love with. Peter knew it – he preferred it that way – and Killian knew it and even if Killian hadn’t been in love with the demon, the boy had still twisted his way into Killian’s life. He’d become so much more than just a lover. He’d been a drug. A terribly, twisting, destroying, freezing drug that Killian had known he had to quit eventually. But not like this, never like this. 

When he sits at the table that night the soldiers are lined up in front of him. The apartment is dark, just like when Liam died, but this is somewhat different. So, so very different. So terribly different that it feels like Killian is drowning, choking, dying. His fingers are trembling when he reaches out for the Rum but by the time the liquid hits his throat it’s too late. He waits for the numbness to set in, to make it all go away in a perfect mist where there never existed a boy with sparkling, demonic eyes and smirks that could wake the dead. Instead of the numbness he finds the much needed cold. It finally reaches his heart and makes it so much easier for him to swallow the Rum. The cold reminds him of Peter but in an oddly comforting way. The cold came with him and it never really left. Not even now.


End file.
